The social media paradox
Taking the drug without it killing you
The drug you can’t avoid
Social media. Whether you like it or not, it's playing a role in your life. Chances are—if you're anything like the "average" person—you spend hours a day staring at some combination of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and any number of other social apps. If you don't think that's you, take a look at the screen time readings on your iPhone and you may find yourself humbled.
If you've somehow managed to avoid this fate, don't celebrate prematurely. You haven't escaped the throes of social media—far from it. You're still living in a world where those around you—your spouse, your kids, your parents, and your friends—are being shaped real-time by the experiences they are having and the information they are consuming on social media.
Sorry, luddites, putting your head in the sand and saying "I don't do social media" isn't really a great solution anymore if you have even a sliver of hope of understanding what is going on in the world around you and in the lives of the people you care about.
A more nuanced approach is needed.
But maybe before we get there, let's think about this question: Is social media all bad?
The answer, in this writer's humble opinion, is a categorical 'no.'
And believe me, I'm going to get to the downsides, but let's consider some of the upsides first.
The upside of all that scrolling
Entertainment - There's no way around it. Social media is entertaining. Most people using these platforms are in almost pure consumption mode - scrolling through funny videos on TikTok or glossy pictures on Instagram. It's a form of escapism, and to some degree, that's not the worst thing in the world. Who doesn't like a little mindless downtime here and there? Entertainment is enjoyment. And sources of enjoyment should be valued.
Community - Every long-term study of human ageing will show you that the more of a connection we feel to those around us, the higher the chances that we live long, healthy and happy lives. And like it or not, social media is a way of forming and maintaining connections. I have many good friends who I haven't seen in 5 or even 10 years. But I generally know what's happening in their lives, and what their kids look like due almost entirely to Facebook. That's added value to my life—and I appreciate it. Regular readers of this newsletter will also know that I have personally found tremendous value in the network of relationships I've been able to cultivate on Twitter. Gone is the stigma of 'making friends online.' In it's place is the reality that people who share the same interests as you are statistically unlikely to be your next door neighbors. I have found like-minded people on Twitter who are interested topics that I care about—things like habits, motivation and health —and I've established real relationships with them. Every guest on my podcast (except one) has been a connection I've made through Twitter. That’s pretty wild. If Twitter didn’t exist, it’s likely I would have never met (or learned from) all of these amazing people. Again, that’s a valuable addition to my life.
Economics - Most people are in consumption mode 95% of the time they're on social media so they are not really leveraging it's economic potential, but I'd be remiss not to mention that social media has opened up (and democratized) economic opportunities at a scale that was never previously imaginable. There are 8 billion people on the planet. Twenty years ago, you might have been able to reach a million or two if you really tried hard and leveraged every medium from newspapers to billboards. Today, you can reach billions. So if you've got a message or a product to sell, and if you get smart about how to use social media, there is almost no reason why you can't make a living by building an audience and then monetizing it. The only limiting factor is the quality of your ideas and your commitment to execute upon them.
Access to people and information - Never in human history have you been able to directly connect in real-time and for free with the people who are changing the world most. A hundred years ago, if you wanted to shoot the shit with John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford, good luck. Not going to happen. Today, if you make a smart comment to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, there's a pretty damn good chance they're going to respond. Access like never before. It's astounding for regular people like you and me. And it’s not just the Musk’s and Bezos’s of the world… it could be your favorite writer, sports star, or even a renowned doctor. Two of my favorite authors recently started following me on Twitter after reading something I wrote. How cool is that? Nothing in history is really comparable. And again, the only limit here is the quality of your ideas and your willingness to share them.
So yes, there are a lot of good things to celebrate when it comes to social media.
But, of course, you've got risks, too. And they are both significant and plentiful.
No shortage of downsides
First of all, social media is incredibly addictive. In Rich Roll's recent conversation with author and NYT report, Max Fisher, the latter highlighted that it's no coincidence that our phones resemble Las Vegas slot machines—complete with bright colors, beeps, buzzes and haptic feedback. Perfectly and intentionally engineered to get you hooked. To deliver instant gratification and leave you wanting more. The social platforms are the same. Your Facebook post goes up and you refresh it 20 times to see how many likes it's getting. As the likes go up, the dopamine does, too. We get hooked on the high and need to keep coming back for more.
I've admitted here before that I'm addicted to Twitter. When I have downtime, I'm opening up Twitter on my phone. The scary thing is that it’s almost an unconscious behavior. I’m waiting in line to get coffee: open Twitter. In an elevator: Twitter. In the bathroom: Twitter. That’s kind of gross, I know. And if I post something clever or that I perceive to be high-quality, I'm checking back a little too often to see if others have given me that external validation that some part of me seems to be craving. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. Statistically speaking, this is most of us. It's just not talked about in polite company. Too embarrassing.
But we're all susceptible to it and likely victims of it, whether we choose to consciously admit it or not.
In addition to the scary prospects of being addicted to social media and losing our ability to self-regulate our own usage, there is also the non-trivial matter of what it is doing to our brains.
According to Fisher, whose heavily researched book, The Chaos Machine, just hit shelves, social media usage is actually changing the way we think—even when we are offline. He explains how social platforms encourage us to modify the words we use in order to garner more engagement. What starts off as external motivation to slightly dial up the drama quickly becomes our new standard pattern of thought—requiring no more external coaxing.
And if unintended changes to your thinking aren't scary enough for you, there's also the slight issue of getting completely brain-washed by whatever social media rabbit hole the algorithm happens to send you down. Most of us were scared silly the first time we saw the The Social Dilemma, the Netflix documentary that opened our eyes to the insidious behaviors of large tech companies who have knowingly and purposefully used every technological trick in the book to get us addicted to these platforms.
That film came out in 2020. It now seems quaint, just two years later as "higher octane" platforms like TikTok have raised the ante on what social media addiction can actually look like.
Here's the troubling thing. There used to be an idea that by choosing who you follow on social media, you were effectively choosing your future thoughts. I subscribed to that theory. And I thought "Hey, if I follow all of these smart, motivated people, this platform is only going to do good things for me." I used to think that. I don't anymore.
Now I know that it doesn't really matter who I follow. The platform is going to show me not the best ideas/tweets/posts of the people I follow but rather the ideas/tweets/posts that it (the algorithm) believes I will not be able to resist engaging with. And that algorithm is smart. It's smarter than me. It’s better at predicting what image I'm going to click on, what video I'm going to watch, and what post I'm going to like.
Is that scary? You're god damn right that's scary. It means I am not choosing what I am exposing myself to. An algorithm set to maximize engagement at all costs is making that choice for me.
And guess what type of content engages the most? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. It's content that inspires conflict, shock, disagreement and controversy. Yes, outrage porn! You think it's bad that your mother-in-law is addicted to the outrage porn on Fox News or CNN? Wait til she gets TikTok injected straight into her veins 24/7. She doesn't have chance against those algorithms. And she'll never even see it coming.
Does that mean we're all heading down a path to being radicalized? I hope not. I like to think we humans can still exercise at least a bit of freewill here and there. But it's getting increasingly difficult to do this if we are full-fledged social media consumers allowing ourselves to be manipulated by these platforms without any guardrails in place.
So if we take as fact that we probably can't completely ignore social media in our lives but we want to insulate ourselves from some of its more harmful effects, what can we do? Here are a few ideas:
Take social media apps off your phone - Heresy, right? What would you do with all of your free time? This is admittedly a case of "do what I say, not what I do" because I haven't completely done this myself, yet. I still have Twitter and LinkedIn on my phone. I'm not worried about getting addicted to LinkedIn. It's not that exciting and I need to be on it for work. Twitter is more dangerous for me. As I mentioned, I'm addicted, so pulling it off my phone would be tough and I'd probably just end up accessing it through a browser anyhow—I’ve tried before and that’s what happened. So I'm putting those two aside for the moment. Personally, I've taken Facebook and Instagram off my phone (probably a year ago) and the results have been great. I waste far less time looking at those apps. I'll log-in maybe once a week on my laptop and that's plenty to give me a taste for what's happening and what I missed—spoiler: it’s not much. TikTok is another story. If Twitter is like smoking marijuana, TikTok is free-basing crack cocaine. Seriously, if you want evidence that social media is a drug, give any human unrestricted access to TikTok for a few weeks. They will become completely addicted. I think it lasted about 1 day on my phone before I said "Holy sh$t, this thing is CRACK." I also have serious concerns with the Chinese ownership of that company. I don’t talk politics in this newsletter, but as an American, I have to acknowledge that China is our #1 or #2 geopolitical adversary in the world. Who knows if that ever goes down a nasty path towards geopolitical conflict, but I am very uncomfortable providing full access to my personal data—even seemingly trivial things like what video I watch or what Tweet I like—to a company that can hand all of that data to a foreign government at a moment's notice. And at a macro level, I'm extremely uncomfortable with China being able to heavily influence the thoughts, opinions and ultimately actions of very large swathes of our population. You remember when information warfare meant dropping pamphlets from airplanes? Now, a foreign government can tweak an algorithm and change your brother-in-law’s political views. That is scary stuff, in my opinion, and the upside of seeing funny videos is far outweighed by all the potential downsides. So I steer clear of that one for a variety of reasons. Finally, if you can’t take social apps off your phone, at least consider turning off all notifications. That’s a simple but essential change to maintain sanity.
Be extremely careful with kids and social media - My 11-year-old is already hassling us to get a phone. If he doesn't have a phone by next year, he'll be the "only one" in his class, he says. Who knows if this is true, but what we do know is that kids are getting phones at younger and younger ages and getting exposed to social media before their brains are even close to fully developed (which happens around age 25). The scary thing here is that you and I—fully grown adults—have to take Herculean measures to combat the addictive effects of these powerful algorithms. Kids who are allowed to access these platforms without any guardrails really don’t have a chance. They almost surely will be manipulated—both psychologically and ideologically—far before their brains are developed enough to make considered decisions on if they’d like to expose themselves to this.
That scares the shit out of me. My kids are already on YouTube, a platform that optimizes for engagement. So I’ve already started to see what the algorithm decides to serve them up and I don’t always love it.
It’s not that YouTube or Facebook or the others are inherently evil. I actually don’t think they are. I don’t think they intend to send people down these crazy rabbit holes where you get nudged to watch videos that are just slightly more controversial again and again until you’re ultimately a Nazi sympathizer. I don’t think that happens on purpose.
Rather, when you have an algorithm with the dial set on “max engagement” there are unintended consequences. And if controversy = engagement, it’s no surprise that one of those consequences is a population where so-called “fringe” views become more accessible. I actually don’t even know if there are more people with crazy left-wing or right-wing views today than there were, say 20 years ago. I suspect that there may not be. But whereas before everyone chalked it up to “crazy racist Uncle Joe over in the corner muttering to himself”, now, Joe can find “his people” online, and they can easily hatch some really bad ideas together that can translate to real-life actions. That’s where it becomes a problem.
Is there hope?
Is social media going to lead to the downfall of society, the radicalization of our kids, and the rotting of our brains? I'm an optimist, so I'm going to say no.
I'm trying to keep in mind that every generation thinks the latest form of media will be the downfall of society. In the 50's and 60's, they thought that Elvis and The Beatles on Ed Sullivan would destroy our children and our morals. Even books were once vilified as a dangerous new medium, believe it or not.
I think more realistically what will happen is that we're all going to get smarter about how to use these platforms. I've heard some equate social media to cigarettes, predicting that a hundred years from now our descendants won't believe that we once allowed children access these platforms.
Government officials are slowing waking up to how impactful social media is in just about every part of our lives, and you can expect to see new regulations coming soon. I think what will happen—probably sooner than we think—is that consumers like you and me will demand platforms that simply show us the content from the people we follow instead of being set to maximize engagement.
That seems like a minor change, but it’s one that will have a massive impact. And one that would allow you to actually control your information diet instead of an algorithm with suspect motives deciding it for you.
If the social platforms of today don’t do this soon, I believe other “more humane” platforms will step in and take their place as we collectively wake up to how we’ve been manipulated, and we demand better.
In the meantime, we can set some guardrails. Adding some friction between you and social media can be a good thing. Even that simple step of taking the apps off your phone can make a dramatic difference.
Despite everything, I am a fan of social media. I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and wish it didn’t exist. I have access to all the information I could ever want in my hand right now. That power, harnessed in the right way, will lead to incredible things for society long-term. We just need to make sure we protect ourselves in the meantime.
And hey, if all else fails, newspapers, podcasts, and you guessed it, newsletters, aren’t a bad way to consume information either.
That's it for this week. Appreciate you reading. See you in two weeks.
Greg
Content Diet
Rich Roll and Max Fisher - How Social Media Rewired Our Brains
Much of today’s article is inspired by this eye-opening conversation. It really got me thinking about my own social media usage and how I want (or don’t want) it to be a part of my life going forward. Highly recommend this one to help educate yourself on how our presence on these platforms is impacting our lives and those of the people we love.
ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus - Andrew Huberman
I’m down a little bit of a rabbit hole at the moment learning about ADHD and all the different ways it manifests. This excellent episode of Huberman Lab dives deep into the subject and explains it from the ground up. If you or anyone in your life is impacted by ADHD, this one is worth your time.
A thread on journaling - by Dickie Bush
Dickie might be the most productive human on Earth. I love learning from this guy. Here are the prompts he uses daily to get the most out of journaling.
That’s it, my friends. Enjoy your Sunday!
Greg